Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas from all at Seal

Thank you to all who have made our Christmas services go so well; musicians and readers, servers and sidespeople, and many others.

Here is the story I told at our morning service on Christmas Day in place of a sermon.
What can I give him?

And a couple of Christmas Carols from our choir - Silent Night and Away in a Manger (Arranged by Eric Harvey, with Grace Prescott as soloist.)

And below are some special prayers and thoughts for Christmastide, some old and some new, to help you reflect on God's gift of love. May we all have a peaceful and blessed Christmastide.

PRAYERS AND REFLECTIONS FOR CHRISTMASTIDE

God did not send into our tormented world
technical aid,
Gabriel with a group of experts.
He did not send food,
not discarded clothes of angels,
even less did he extend long term loans.
Rather he came himself,
born in a stable, starved in the desert
naked on a cross.
And sharing with us he became our bread
and suffering with us he became our joy.
Anon.

Blessed art thou, O Christmas Christ,
that thy cradle was so low that shepherds,
poorest and simplest of earthly folk,
could yet kneel beside it,
and look level-eyed into the face of God.
Anon.

O God, the source of all insight,
whose coming was revealed to the nations
not among men of power but on a woman’s lap;
give us grace to seek you
where you may be found,
that the wisdom of this world may be humbled
and so we may discover your unexpected joy,
through Jesus Christ.
Janet Morley

How I admire the Lord,
The Creator of the world!
He wanted to be born
Not surrounded by gold and silver
But just on a piece of this earth.
St Jerome , died 420

God’s Son became human, so that human beings might have their home in God.
Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Snow update


SNOW UPDATE - Dec 18th

A beautiful dawn this morning over the snowy fields next door, but as we all know, "Red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning!"

Snow is forecast for this weekend and the week leading up to Christmas Day. My plan is for services to go ahead as advertised, even if we have to improvise and simplify a bit!
However, PLEASE do not take any risks to get to church if conditions are dangerous, and be aware that the roads and pavements leading up to the church are usually ungritted and often slippery. We will do our best to keep the church path itself free from snow and ice.
If you are taking part in a service and cannot safely get here, please do not make heroic efforts to do so. Just let me know if you can, by phone or email, that you will not be coming. Above all, stay safe and remember that God is with you where you are!

Monday, December 13, 2010

Welcome to our new Bishop

Bishop James Langstaff was welcomed as the new Bishop of Rochester on Saturday Dec 11th.
I have pasted a copy of the sermon he preached at his installation below. He speaks about the overflowing generosity of God, and hopes that this Diocese will be a place where that generosity is a hallmark of our life together. Amen, Bishop, amen!

Some other coverage of Bishop James' inauguration can be found in the links below: Rosemary Clary and Stephen Snelling represented Seal at this service, and I am sure they will be happy to tell you about it if you want to know more.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11976208 http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2010/december/13/bishop_of_rochester_installed.aspx
The Rt Revd James Langstaff – Bishop of Rochester
Inaugural Sermon Rochester Cathedral - 11th December 2010
Isaiah 55.1-11; John 6.1-14


While some may say that, ‘The best things in life are free’, others will have it that, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. Well today there is a free lunch – it’s under your seat and, just in case you’re tempted to tuck in at some point over the next few minutes, we do have cameras all over the building!

Jesus made something of a habit of giving free lunches. John’s gospel records one such occasion as we have just heard; Mark and Matthew give us two. And John, as well as giving us a free lunch story, gives us also a free wine story – that of the wedding at Cana where, as the wine provided by the host runs out, Jesus turns water into wine of the very best quality. I did at one point wonder whether we might do that today as well, but wisdom overcame enthusiasm – and of course a number of you have to drive home afterwards.

In this feeding miracle Jesus, not content with providing enough, provides more than enough – twelve baskets more than enough. Wasteful, some may think, but for John especially no detail is without its significance and here in these leftovers is the sign of God’s overflowing provision, God’s abundant generosity. At Cana too, the wine-diminished day is saved not with a few bottles of supermarket plonk, but with about 150 gallons of the best quality Burgundy (or whatever the Galilean equivalent might have been).

There is a wonderful extravagance at the heart of God; an extravagance of what Christians call ‘grace’. Grace is God’s love, God’s favour, God’s acceptance, God’s generosity, poured out on humankind without condition. A reservoir that never runs dry, a sea with no shore – no end, an ocean that ever rolls. It is given without condition, because of course we could anyway never hope to fulfil any condition. This is not something we can earn, or achieve by our own efforts whether of hard work, academic success, worldly wealth or even religious devotion. This is 100% gift, as with the loaves and the wine, and it is free: freely given for us to receive.

This generosity of God is the fulfilment of what is spoken of in the prophecy of Isaiah in deliberately paradoxical language: ‘you that have no money, come, buy and eat!’ But if I have no money, how can I buy? Precisely the point: even if we had all the money in the world, we could not buy the riches of God’s loving provision for us – but still we may, as it were, buy and so we receive. ‘Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.’ As the prophet points out, we spend an awful lot of energy and indeed money striving after things which don’t really satisfy – ‘food that goes off’, as Jesus puts it elsewhere – but God is offering us something that really will nourish: good food to eat and rich fare on which to delight ourselves. And it comes to us as total gift. It doesn’t make sense in terms of the way things normally work but, as the passage tells us later, God’s ways are not our ways – in today’s language we might say that God is counterintuitive.

The overflowing love of God; the inexhaustible riches of God; the inexplicable graciousness of God; the abundant generosity of God. A God who never tires of reaching out in love to us and to all humanity to welcome us to himself that we might live in his ways. A word perhaps for this day, for our times and for this season.

For today, because today you have generously come together to welcome me; and in that welcome I recognise and am pleased to receive something of the generosity of God. Lots of people, including many here today, have sent kind greetings and words of welcome; some indeed have come many thousands of miles across the world and it is very good to have you here today from our partner dioceses. It is good (if also a little daunting) to sense the spirit of expectancy in those greetings and this welcome. That mutual and, I hope, generous welcoming of me by you and you by me will continue beyond today as I begin to know you and be known by you. Over the coming weeks and months you will find me popping up all over the place as I visit each deanery and try to take other opportunities to build a sense of relatedness between us. I’m looking forward to being in two parishes tomorrow, at the Bishop of Rochester Academy on Wednesday and at Rochester Prison on Thursday. And as you get to know me, my foibles and weaknesses, you will, I am sure, have plenty of opportunity to develop your gracious generosity in forgiving my failings. But perhaps in other ways too we will, in our dealings with each other, mine more deeply from that rich vein of God’s generosity.

And I would wish to see that same spirit spread more widely within our church and churches – and my apologies to those of you not from the Christian community, if I speak for a moment to those who are. I do despair sometimes when I see and hear the ways in which Christians act and speak in relation to each other. Language used and attitudes displayed can be anything but Christian. The lack of simple graciousness and generosity can be shocking, not least to those not part of our churches. ‘See how these Christians love one another’ is sadly sometimes true only when said ironically. These are of course times of particular tension within the Church of England and the Anglican family more widely. And it is of course precisely because these are in a sense family disputes that there is sometimes such strength of feeling expressed – families are remarkably adept at falling out with each other in dramatic and public ways.

But it’s not just - or indeed mainly - those high-profile, media-delighting disputes that I have in mind. I’m thinking also of the fallings out within congregations, the suspicions between congregations, the tensions within dioceses over money, sharing resources and the like. And I ask myself how the fabric of our being together within the church may more colourfully be shot through with the silken thread of God’s generosity and loving welcome. How we speak with, to and about one another should surely be with generosity of spirit. How we support one another and share our gifts should surely reflect that cheerful giving of which the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians – the attitude which brings about a bountiful harvest of blessing in abundance. Freely you have received – freely give.


A word for this day and also for our times. We hear much of tightening belts and tough decisions; we know of cuts coming in many services and spending streams. Businesses, charities, voluntary groups and private individuals face real challenges, tight credit, lack of sponsorship, falling off of income. How do we react? A temptation is to pull up the drawbridge, turn in on ourselves as individuals and as a nation and try to protect our own well-being. ‘Charity begins at home’, we may tell ourselves and now is the time to look after our own.
But doing that - closing our hands as it were and holding ourselves tightly to ourselves – that actually ends up diminishing our own lives, making us less than we ought to be. Centuries ago, the people of Jerusalem had to learn as they went into exile in the strange land of Babylon – by whose waters they wept – that their well-being lay in seeking the well-being of those around them in the place where they were. And in these times there is a challenge to us to look beyond ourselves and our own needs, to open our hands, to work and to pray for that Big Society which the church has been working for over rather more than a couple of years; to be ready to give of ourselves generously for the sake of others. In my last diocese we had a link with Papua New Guinea, one of the poorest and least developed countries on earth. There I have had the privilege of meeting people who, in our terms, have almost nothing but who generously welcomed me and shared with me the little that they have. It is often those who have least who show us how to be generous. So how in these times will we open our hands and generously seek the good of all those among whom we live?

A word for this day, for our times and for this season. In these days of Advent we prepare to celebrate God’s gift of gifts. For Christians the fullest possible expression of God’s generosity: the giving by God of his very self, the essence of his being, out of love for the world that the world may have life in abundance. The birth of the infant of Bethlehem, Jesus. It may or may not be that there are those intent on squeezing the meaning out of Christmas. If there are such people, it is certainly not our companions of other faith traditions, some of whom are most welcome guests here today. Those who are the followers of such faiths would no more extinguish Christmas than I would abolish Eid-al-Fitr, Hannukah, Diwali or Vaisakhi. What is the case is that in these coming days this building will be full to overflowing. And in churches across this diocese, through music, reading, prayer, poem, proclamation and invitation, the giving of that most wondrous gift will be celebrated afresh. Our generous God comes among us, is made one with us – and thanks be to God for that inexpressible gift.

Remember the twelve baskets of leftovers and be inspired afresh with the extravagant generosity of God. Dioceses sometimes come up with strap-lines to describe themselves and their aspirations: we could do worse than being ‘The Diocese of Rochester: a generous people’ – just so long as it is true.

A project for the New Year?

I have occasionally felt slightly frustrated that Seal church is right on the edge of the village, up a hill, which can be off-putting for people at the other end of the village, especially in bad weather. Perhaps this video, found on the excellent blog of the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson could provide an answer? (Or maybe not!)



http://bishopalan.blogspot.com/2010/12/radical-pastoral-reorganisation.html

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Village Christmas Event

A big thank you to all who helped make yesterday's grand Village Christmas event so successful (including the PCSO Sue Harwood, and a couple of our local firefighters who helped marshall the procession of children in costume and the donkey from the school up the dark and icy road to the Five Bells Pub !There should be pictures of the nativity scene in the Sevenoaks Chronicle soon , with Landlord John entering into the spirit of things with his Innkeeper's costume, and a wonderful "stable" complete with hay and assorted animals.
In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures from inside the church. As well as the stalls there was also some activity on offer for the children, and a well used Quiet Area in the candlelit Lady Chapel for prayer.
A great number of people, coordinated by the Know Your Neighbours group, were involved in organising this event - from the school, the pub, the church and other groups, with Marion Gilchrist holding it all together somehow. Thanks to Dan Clews, also, for providing entertainment in the church hall, and John Miah for his wonderful Tandoori Nights cooking - delicious as ever. Thank you to everyone for a night to remember, and I hope you have a quiet day today to recover!


Monday, December 06, 2010

Crisis collection - thank you!

Thanks to Anna Linley for the photo!
Thank you to all those sledgers who dropped into church for hot drinks last week. Your donations to Crisis added up to £73.86, which I have sent to them today.
This means that we have provided for three people to be accommodated at one of their centres this Christmas. You can find out more about their work here.


Friday, December 03, 2010

Seal sledgers

A few pictures of the activity in and around Seal Church this afternoon. Much fun was had by children (and their parents) in the snow, and the chance to warm up in the church with a hot chocolate seems to have been appreciated.

And yes, you can see me pulling a sledge back up the hill in the last but one photo - someone insisted on me having a go, so I didn't miss out on the fun (!?) Mercifully the picture of me going downhill (gingerly) didn't come out so well!














Thursday, December 02, 2010

Breathing Space tonight CANCELLED

I have bowed to the inevitable and cancelled Breathing Space Holy Communion tonight. While I could have got there, I didn't want anyone else to be even vaguely tempted to try, since negotiating icy roads and pavements, with steps and other obstacles now buried under a thick lager of snow seems like an invitation to disaster.
The short address I would have given, the first in a series entitled "Wait for the Lord" will be posted on the sermon blog - see link to the right - later today.

The church will be open again today, with the makings of hot drinks for sledgers (and others), as soon as Philip and I have dug our way out of the house and up to the church door!

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Snowy Seal

I took the photos that follow as I cleared and salted the church path this morning - there was a foot of snow in some places, and it was blowing into drifts, so I thought I'd better at least try to keep on top of the snow shovelling, or we won't be able to get in at all !

Sledger's Paradise has opened as usual in the field below the church, and remembering this from the last lot of snow, I have put up signs telling sledgers that the church is open for them to come in and warm up, and that we don't mind puddles! (Apologies to whoever is on church cleaning duty this week...) I have also set up the makings of hot drinks, a thermos, a kettle, tea, coffee squash etc. for people to help themselves (with a bowl for donations to Crisis - just imagine being homeless in this...)

I had a couple of cold looking teenagers in the church very gratefully making use of this even before I had finished setting up. I will try to keep this going over the next couple of days if the snow persists.






























Sunday, November 28, 2010

Advent prayer and reflection

Advent can be a very busy time. In between the Christmas shopping, parties and special events it can be very hard to stop and reflect, which is the real purpose of this season of preparation for our celebration of the birth of Christ.

However, Christmas, when it comes (not till midnight on Christmas Eve officially speaking!) means much more if you have managed to spend even a little time preparing for it spiritually as well as materially.

There are lots of ways you can do this - pray as you can, not as you can't.

You might like to make a Jesse Tree . This is a symbolic representation of the Old Testament stories which lead to the birth of Christ - his spiritual "family tree" if you like. I have provided a reading and thought for each day to go with the making of this.

You might like to use some of the other traditional Advent symbols - the Advent Candle which burns down through a section a day, Advent calendars, or an Advent wreath, or just take some time to read the Bible, to pray or simply to sit still in silence for 10 minutes a day.
There are suggestions and advice here.

If silence is new to you, there is a good website here to help you make the most of it.

You might also like to try an online Advent calendar - whyarewewaiting.com is a site sponsored by the Church of England, with thoughts for each day.
The Irish Jesuits also do a very good daily prayer website - sacredspace - which I recommend.

What really matters is that we make a decision to do something spiritually during Advent, even if that is a decision to do nothing, but to do it deliberately for 10 minutes or so each day!

I hope you have a holy Advent, so that Christmas, when it comes is full of blessings.

Advent and Christmas

Here are some details of Advent and Christmas services and events at Seal.

You can find all the details on the website - http://www.sealpeterandpaul.com/ - there's a lot going on over the next month, so I hope there is something for everyone.
Tonight (Nov 28) we have our UNITED ADVENT SERVICE at 6.30pm , with choirs from St Lawrence and Underriver joining us for a special service to welcome Advent at 6.30 pm. The collection will be for Christian Aid's "Far from Home" appeal for their work with refugees.

Moving on through Advent there are plenty of other things happening.

Families with children might particularly enjoy “Messy Church” on Dec 5 from 4 -5.30pm– a very informal session of crafts and activities which ends with a few minutes of singing and prayer together, followed by tea and cake. The Christingle service on Dec 12, and the Crib service on Christmas Eve are also designed very much with children in mind.

If you want a bit of peace and quiet as an antidote to all the excitement of the season, I recommend our candle-lit Advent “Breathing Space” Communion services on Thursdays 2, 9 &16 Dec. Lasting about 30 minutes, these have plenty of silence, some gentle music – no hymns - and a short talk.

As well as these services, of course there are our traditional services – the Carol Service on Dec 19, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and the All Age Communion on Christmas Day.

This year, there will also be a grand Village Christmas Event on Friday Dec 10, when the whole village will be "en fete". The event will begin in Seal School in Zambra Way at 3.15 with the school Christmas fair. At the end of that - around 5.30 we will process up to the Five Bells pub with the children in costume and a donkey (and Father Christmas). We will then sing some carols at the pub, fortified by mulled wine and mince pies - proceeds split between the church and the donkey rescue charity who are providing the donkey. Many thanks to the landlords of the Five Bells for their generosity in this.

We will then, at around 6 pm, move onto the church and church hall where there will be stalls, refreshments (bar and curry from Tandoori nights) and music from Dan Clews.

This event is being organised by the Know Your Neighbours group, which consists of a wide variety of individuals and groups from the village, and we are hoping you will make it a great success by turning up and enjoying yourselves!

HELP WANTED
If you can donate cakes, costume jewellery or items to be used in table decorations to be sold on the church stalls on the night, please let me know.

We could also do with some offers of help to man stalls and steward the event, especially to keep an eye on those crossing the road from the church to church hall. Again, please let me know if you can help.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY Sunday November 14th

9 am – Godden Green War Memorial
Short act of Remembrance

10 am – St Peter and St Paul, Seal
Traditional service for Remembrance Sunday including two minutes’ silence and Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Knit your own Bible!

Nicky Harvey and I have been hard at work over the last few weeks designing and making prototypes for our "knit your own Bible" project.

Seal School and our own Sunday School are in need of ways of helping children explore Bible stories. We discovered that it was easy to find toys relating to the Nativity or Noah's Ark, but nothing much beyond that, so we decided to knit our own.

You can see the result - a great pile of glove puppets - here, along with the pattern and suggestions to create a wide variety of Bible characters.

If you like to knit, why not make some and send them to me to be used in the school and Sunday school. (Of course you can also make the puppets for your own children or grandchildren, or for a project you knit for - we don't mind at all, so long as you don't sell the pattern for gain.)
The pattern is simple - if you can manage basic knitting stitches you can knit these. It is just the thing to occupy those long winter evenings!

UPDATES.

Here are DAVID AND GOLIATH. I made David smaller than the standard pattern (the body was 14 stitches wide, and I cast on 8 rather than 10 stitches for the arms, then cast off 10 for the neck).The belt and pouch (for the sling shots!) were embroidered on afterwards.Goliath's body was 20 stitches wide, 24 rows long before the arms. I cast on 12 stitches for the arms and cast off 14. The armour was made as for the Roman soldier, and I made a separate beard, then sewed in hair and embroidered a sword afterwards.

PONTIUS PILATE/ ROMAN
Basic figure, with a white sleeveless tunic. For the toga I cast on 18 stitches and knitted stocking stitch (with first three stitches each side garter stitch to prevent it curling up) , until it was long enough to go right around body and over shoulder. I finished with a few rows of garter stitch, then sewed it onto body.














LION
Mane is knitted in wispy wool. Tail is a stocking stitch rectangle, folded into tube and sewn on.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Seal School Prayer Letter

Every term the foundation (church appointed) governors at Seal School produce a prayer letter for the school, with various prayer requests for that term’s activities. You can find this term's prayer letter here.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Bike and Hike 2010


THANK YOU to all who walked, cycled or welcomed visitors as part of the Historic Churches Bike and Hike yesterday. Congratulations to all our walkers and cyclists, and especially to our youth group, who visited most of the churches in central Sevenoaks before making their way home (rather wearily!). We had some fascinating theological discussions along the way, and managed to get everyone home safely, without causing too many breaches of the peace along the way! The young people also (surreptitiously) rated all the churches we visited on general attractiveness, warmth of welcome and standard of refreshments - the last probably outweighed the others!- and I'm glad to say that Seal still came top for them! Our special thanks go to Nicky Harvey who organised this for us again, made refreshments and walked with the Youth Group.
The picture below was taken at St Nick's, our last port of call. "Look tired" I said to the assembled throng, which wasn't difficult by that stage (and we still had to walk home...)






Saturday, September 04, 2010

Stephen's Ordination




Today's ordination of Deacons in the Cathedral was a wonderful, joyful service. Our new Curate, Stephen Snelling, of course, was one of the ordinands, and, from the beaming smile on his face, clearly found the service every bit as moving as those of us who were watching. Here are some photos - a "before" and "after" shot.

In case you wonder what a Deacon is, I have pasted below the words which are read in ordination services just before the candidates are ordained.

"Deacons are called to work with the Bishop and the priests with whom they serve as heralds of Christ’s kingdom. They are to proclaim the gospel in word and deed, as agents of God’s purposes of love. They are to serve the community in which they are set, bringing to the Church the needs and hopes of all the people. They are to work with their fellow members in searching out the poor and weak, the sick and lonely and those who are oppressed and powerless, reaching into the forgotten corners of the world, that the love of God may be made visible.
Deacons share in the pastoral ministry of the Church and in leading God’s people in worship. They preach the word and bring the needs of the world before the Church in intercession. They accompany those searching for faith and bring them to baptism. They assist in administering the sacraments; they distribute communion and minister to the sick and housebound.
Deacons are to seek nourishment from the Scriptures; they are to study them with God’s people, that the whole Church may be equipped to live out the gospel in the world. They are to be faithful in prayer, expectant and watchful for the signs of God’s presence, as he reveals his kingdom among us."

In practical terms a deacon can lead worship, preach, take part in the pastoral work, and do many of the other things a priest does, but deacons can't pronounce the absolution or the blessing, or consecrate the bread and wine at Holy Communion. Clergy are normally ordained deacon first, then ordained priest a year later, so Stephen should be ordained as a priest this time next year. You can recognise a deacon by the fact that they wear their stoles diagonally across one shoulder,- Miss World style! - rather than vertically as priests do.

We will be welcoming Stephen officially at Seal tomorrow morning for his first service with us. Please pray for him and for his wife, Deborah, as they begin this new stage in their lives.

Monday, August 09, 2010

Picnic in the park 2

More fun in the sun at our second picnic in the park. Parachute games enjoyed by children and adults alike.
The final picnic in the park is on Aug 29th from 4-5.30pm on Seal Recreation Ground. Bring a picnic tea and join in - all welcome (and you don't HAVE to play games if you don't want to!)






Monday, July 19, 2010

Interview with Rowan Williams

There's a good interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the New Statesman today, if you are interested.
http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2010/07/interview-religious-human

Picnic in the park 1



About 20 of us turned up yesterday in Seal Rec for the first of our "picnics in the park". The more active played games which were probably distant cousins of cricket and lacrosse (though with no discernable rules or teams as far as this onlooker could tell) and there were parachute games for those less inclined to team sports. Thankfully it was also quite ok to sit in the shade and chat!

A great time was had by all. Thank you, Nicky, for bringing the games equipment.


There will be two more picnics - Aug 8th and Aug 29th - both from 4 -5.30 in Seal Rec (or possibly in the hall if it is wet - please check notices/website if the weather looks dodgy).

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Bewl Water Sponsored Walk















10 people and 6 dogs successfully circumnavigated Bewl Water on Saturday. The people walked 13 miles around the water; the dogs must have walked at least 45, and quite a lot of that was in the water!
A great time was had by all, and we were delighted to be met at the end by Hilary, Jill, Barbara and Helen who had brought cake and tea to replace the calories we had burnt off... Thank you!
Pictures below...
































Believe it or not, Molly the dog started the walk with an immaculate bouffant coiffure - never mind, Molly, a bath and a blow-dry should put you back to rights...!


















Monday, June 28, 2010

We survived the Youth Group "Sleep"over...

We survived another "Sleep"over in the vicarage garden to celebrate our Patronal Festival. If you had been there you would understand why the "sleep" in the title is in inverted commas...not a lot of it in evidence!

Someone had the bright idea of building a human pyramid - the process was not as easy as the end result implies...










The morning after the night before. But some of the children seemed still to have enough energy for a water fight! The same could not be said for the leaders! Many thanks to my right-hand woman, Nicky Harvey, for her energy and enthusiasm (and her tents, borrowed from Seal Cubs!)